Because content isn't worth putting in millions of dollars if it's only getting used by a tiny small amount of players. The more players will use it, the more reason is there to spend all those resources on it.

The ROI on creating a raid that only 0.1% of your customers will be using is minuscule.

What ROI? People already payed for the game, they're already paying the subscription. Blizzard doesn't get any more money from raids if more people see it. Look at Naxx40, there wasn't any mass exodus from WoW because 99% of the players didn't get to raid it. The whole time, subs went up; even through TBC where lots of people didn't get to progress to the higher tiers.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

´So.. sorry to bring this up but..you know that .."thing" (Med'an).. is that "thing" cannon still?
...as much have some have wished otherwise, yes. (Loreology)

You could still see the last chapter though, it was there for you to go out and grab. You just had to put some effort into doing so.

Respec and gear for heals, or reroll another class entirely, is "some effort" all right. Yes, this is true even now in the era of "bring the player" (which is and has always been a facetious lie).

What ROI? People already payed for the game, they're already paying the subscription.

Retaining the subscriptions of some 10,000 hardcores with a five million dollar raid they'll run for six months before they tire of it is a poor business decision. AQ40 and Naxx40 were just big holes Blizzard dumped ungodly amounts of money into.

Last edited by Lumineus; 2013-06-07 at 09:46 PM.

OMG 13:37 - Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Cleave unto me, and I shall grant to thee the blessing of eternal salvation."

8(or even less in the future, as more raiders would quit to due lack of content ) bosses per tier, for a total of 24 per expoansion. Is really better than 40-45 bosses per expo?` Just so that those who can't raid/don't enjoy sheduled raiding can't do them?

I mean, I'm fine with the old badge/point system from wrath/cata. But it just seems a bit strange that those who enjoy raiding actually prefer less content over LFR(which they can ignore).

During BC, the game was probably at its peak as far as cultural relevance goes. That's why subs dropped past that point, it stopped being on peoples' minds as much. Kinda like the Wii at its peak. People were fucking crazy for Wii. They were sold out everywhere and if you could actually get a hold of one, well, then good luck actually finding a second controller. But here we are years later, and how many people actually bought a Wii U? Nobody did because the fad has been played out and it's not interesting to most people whatsoever, anymore. I don't know why people can't realize that as a game gets older, it's going to lose subs. It's not because BC was just this golden age for WoW that every expansion should aim to emulate. I guarantee if they did go back to the way things were in BC, subs would bomb. Hard.

I never really understood why some players consider exclusive content a negative thing for this game. Lets be frank about what exclusive means. This means content that required a certain dedication to the game, and time commitment. Being able to play well and organize with other players to accomplish legendary feats.

Skip all the talk about TBC and Vanilla being the "least accessible content blizzard created," lets talk about the here and now.

1) Having exclusive mounts and cosmetic items that disappear after the end of an expansion. Why is this bad? Should rewards not be tied to the context of the content they relate to? In other words, if cosmetic and vanity items are rewarded to players who do extremely difficult things like heroic raid bosses, or gladiator PvP, why shouldn't they be removed from the game when new expansions trivialize the content?

2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment? Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

And please, dont give me "the flair and excitement of a new game" or "the game was new back then" The game is new to anyone who picks it up for the first time even now days.

Last point:

The game is here for you (us) the players to have fun. Now if all you consider fun is "raiding" in whatever difficulty you "raid" in, then perhaps the game would lose your subscription. This is not however the case with World of Warcraft at all. In fact, even though more characters (not players) have seen "end game" content, it is still a minuscule number of people "raiding" compared to the population of WoW. I guess though since blizzard has trained players to think that all end game consists of is raiding, the problem lies in their own court. The real question you have to ask yourself.. what did end game consist of for all those players in Vanilla, TBC, and early WoTLK if only "1%" of them raided?

The other side of the coin with this statement is that the content is there. They just need to do certain things to get into that content. Their $15 is the same amount as the guy who puts in the time and effort to see the content. Only, the one feels entitled to get into / see the content without putting any effort toward that goal, and the other is willing to.

---------- Post added 2013-06-07 at 09:34 PM ----------

You could still see the last chapter though, it was there for you to go out and grab. You just had to put some effort into doing so.

Seriously, you think all players should be like *you*. Should be able to put in the same amount of time/investment/skill into this game. Hate to tell you buddy, but not everyone *IS* like you. There are a variety of reasons for this, they could be disabled players, work long hours or have a highly committed family life. "Exclusive" content is utter nonsense, it's bad...well, shame on you: Why do you CARE if some 9 til 5 working stiff gets to play WoW and see the final boss while at the same time juggling his 2+ kids around? Please, don't be ignorant of the real world and demand everything be tuned towards how you want to play the game. These players are not less dedicated because they choose to be, and you make it seem like they are. They STILL want their money's worth and not seeing the bosses is not getting their money's worth.

Oh yeah, here's your exclusive content: Achievements, higher iLV gear and the SATISFACTION you get for beating the boss on the hardest mode. Also, you get Exclusive mounts.

Oh yeah and: 2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment? Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

Blizzard have stated the reason for most of the sub% losses are from semi-dedicated guilds being burned out, can't do normal's because they are overtuned and LFR is just a nightmare for anyone who is "too good for it". Unless blizzard are, you know, lying - it proves your point wrong. More or less.

There's nothing at all wrong with it. In the end though it's an economics and design argument.

The obvious example is raiding content. Blizzard gets to make the call on whether or not to develop it and how much time and effort to sink into it. When 'raiding' as content was difficult to get into, i.e. more exclusive if you will, eventually it became difficult to justify the costs of creating it given the number of people doing it.

So they made a decision that if they could get more people into it in one form or another by making it less difficult--less exclusive--they could justify allocating more to it.

The move to make content 'less exclusive' is the natural result of a future in which it appears as if the game population will continue to shrink due to a number of factors. One can safely assume that exclusive content that is resource heavy to develop and which ends up having not much of an audience will be cut. That applies to raiding, PVP or any content really.

So the decision is really to make things accessible as a justification to keep them running or to keep certain things exclusive and if they fail to attract an audience cut them out.

This is the main point that the interview with the LOL content designer missed. Blizzard needs to make economic justifications for what they do because the nature of their game is simply more complicated than League of Legends with a lot more variety in content and moving parts.

You have some good points. One thing I would like to point out though, is that when they made the decision to convert to a more inclusive approach to raiding, their revenue didn't increase much.. if at all. That decision was made at the beginning of Wotlk when they decided to make all raids going forward have a 10 man and a 25 man version of the same raid, and even more so at the end when they decided to nerf content more than what gear upgrades would naturally nerf it. Their subscriptions peaked during the middle of this expansion in the middle of, or even before they decided to convert to a more inclusive approach.

So why would they think it is not sustainable to continue to create exclusive raid content when that model served them, and saw them achieving the highest subscriptions in the game's history?

Oh yeah and: 2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment? Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

Blizzard have stated the reason for most of the sub% losses are from semi-dedicated guilds being burned out, can't do normal's because they are overtuned and LFR is just a nightmare for anyone who is "too good for it". Unless blizzard are, you know, lying - it proves your point wrong. More or less.

I don't remember Blizzard ever saying that.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

´So.. sorry to bring this up but..you know that .."thing" (Med'an).. is that "thing" cannon still?
...as much have some have wished otherwise, yes. (Loreology)

exclusive mounts and titles? Those are a good thing, and I doubt many many are against it.
Exclusive raids? Those are indeed a bad thing, Why should a large part of the budget be spend on something only 5-10%~ will see?

They had 2 choices. A) Make less raiding content or B) introduce LFR.

But that model worked. It saw them achieve the highest amount of subscriptions in the game's history.

Here's a book, and you can't read the last chapter unless you've read all before it.

The general WoW community wants cliff notes, and then wonders why there's nothing compelling them to stay subscribed. *shrug*

You know melodramocracy, i think I have disagreed with you several times in the past, but for some reason, every time you post now days, i agree with what you say 100%. This is one of those times I completely agree with you.

2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment?

Because among x million players there are x million different players. You can't put everybody into same mold of playstyle therefore it makes more sense to make different playstyles available. Or to turn this argument around, you could just as well delete PvP from the game since it's not aimed at my interests.

Among x million different players there are x million opinions of what the game should include, which means vast majority of the players actually disagree with you (and me) simply going by statistics.

Originally Posted by Jaylock

Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

This is one gigantic fallacy thrown around in the forums for years.

Problem is that we as the players do not know why people have unsubscribed at various stages of the game. Blizzard knows better, or at least they have the exit polls to go by. Going by common sense far bigger reason for unsubscribing over the years, even while the total number of subscribers was increasing was "there isn't enough for me to do" instead of "there isn't enough exclusive content I can't access".

Originally Posted by Jaylock

The real question you have to ask yourself.. what did end game consist of for all those players in Vanilla, TBC, and early WoTLK if only "1%" of them raided?

WoW was better game than all other alternatives at that point in time. Other games were mindless grind of 6 million boars if you didn't raid. WoW had also few five-man instances on top of the boars for players who didn't raid. You need to put things into context and the answer is so damn obvious.

Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
Trolling should be.